No cell phone, no problem

 I have been working at Amazing Joe’s in Muncie since the beginning of last May.

At my first day of orientation I was informed on the dress code, policies and rules at Joe’s.  The big rule they were stressing was that we were not allowed to have our cell phones on us while at work.  Once you clock in you are not to have your phone and if you are caught on it while at work you will be immediately fired, no questions asked.  Our boss, Chad, told me he had to let a really good worker go a few months early because she chose to ignore this rule.  He said it doesn’t matter how long you work there or how great of service you give, if you’re caught on your phone you’re fired on the spot.

At first I thought this to be a little extreme and that maybe he was just trying to scare me.  It wasn’t until my first day of training that I realized just how serious he was.  KJ, my trainer for my first shift, made sure to let me know that having your phone was the number one rule at Joe’s.  All other servers I talked to that day echoed this. Needless to say, I made sure to leave my phone in my purse while I was working and still do even to this day.

After working at Joe’s for only about a month I realized that the people who I was hanging out with when I wasn’t at work were Joe’s people.  I realized that in only a few weeks I had developed some extremely deep friendships. 

One day I was at home with my roommate trying to tell her a story about my day. After I had been talking for about a minute straight she looked up at me and said “Wait, who is this kid again?” She hadn’t heard a word I was saying because she was too busy checking her Twitter.  It was then that I realized the reason I had developed these friendships with my co-workers in such a short amount of time.

When we are work, we only have our customers and co-workers to talk to.  We can’t talk to anyone who is outside of Joes.  Our focus is only on the people who are physically with us.  That is why we all always have something we can talk to each other about.  I always know what’s going on in the lives of my co-workers because we are physically with each other.  I can tell when someone is having a bad day because I can read it on his or her face; I don’t have my face buried in my phone when someone is talking to me. 

I always look forward to going to work, not just because I have found some great friends who I enjoy being around but because I get to have genuine conversations without being distracted by cell phones.  Something so many people today probably don’t even know is possible.